Starry-Eyed
by swiftasdeer
Summary: Daryl is definitely not a city guy. Modern AU.


I never posted this outside of Tumblr so I figured I would! A short little thing written for Bethyl Week back in the day. Prompt was 'sweet'.

Enjoy!

* * *

It's not his scene at all.

The city is dirty, in a bad way. It's too loud, too many people all around, bumping into him and too caught up in their own shit to even apologize. Or watch where they're going in the first place.

He hates the city, he's been itching to get out of there the moment he stepped out of his truck. But he made a promise, he has a job to do and once he gets it over with, he's hightailing out of there.

Jesus, the music in this place is awful. It vibrates his entire core and throbs almost painfully in his ear. He'll be lucky if the ringing dies out by morning. And he has to squint due to the lights, strobes and spots blinding him for only a second before they whirl around or flash off. He curses to himself, under his breath, rubbing at his eyes.

It doesn't smell like the places he's been in before. It reeks of weed and something sweet, the scent itself is sickly so, like cotton candy. And there's so many people, all sweaty and colliding into each other, purposely. Mashing their bodies like they're rocks and maybe if they push and grind hard enough, they'll ignite a spark and send the whole place up in a blaze.

He stands off to the side, along the wall, waiting for him. The guy's late and that's annoying. He's really not sure how much longer he can handle being in this place. It's not even a question that he stands out like a sore thumb, but nobody seems to give him a second look, thankfully.

The center floor is packed, wall to wall people. All he can spot is random arms outstretching and whooshes of hair as girls spin and thrash about. They all blend and seep into one another, one giant mass that pulsates together. The music seamlessly sweeps into a different beat and he swears every glass in the place is rattling. The roof might even cave in.

There's a part in the floor, a handful of people escaping the massive black hole of a dance floor. And the opening reveals her.

The dashes of light hit her dress and reflect off it like a diamond, silver and twinkling. She glitters and sparkles with every contort and twist of her body. Her limbs look almost too long for her and her white skin glows, like strips of lights escaping the void. Maybe it's just his eyes, but she stands out from the crowd so much that the people all around her fade away. She tosses her hair to the side and it's messy, it's tousled and maybe knotted, and it's only when she begins ascending the stairs from the pit that he gets a real good look at her.

She's effervescent and he realizes his mouth has gone dry when she makes her way towards him. He thinks maybe she's coming to him, she saw him staring, maybe she'll tell him off. But her eyes never find their way to him. She floats past him and he's hit with a new smell, something also sweet but not grossly so. It's more subtle and he wonders if it's her hair. She stops at a table a few feet away, where another girl, slightly older, is sitting.

Her cheeks are tinted pink and it spreads down her neck, across her shoulders and the top of her chest, along the neckline of her dress. He forces his gaze to the ground and lord, he wishes this guy would just show up so he could get out of here.

His self-restraint is limited and he looks back over at her. She's smiling and laughs at something, which causes her nose to crinkle and her head to tilt back. She doesn't really look like the other women here; her dress hangs a bit oddly, like it's too big for her frame. And her face seems fresher, younger, like she's never spent a day of her life in the polluted, obnoxious streets of the city.

His gaze is suddenly met with her big, wide eyes and dammit, he knows he should look away but he can't. He's frozen.

Her lips shine in the light, like she's just run her tongue along them, and she gives him a curious look before turning her back to him, and finally he can let out the breath he didn't know he was holding.

Yeah, he really needs to get out of here.


End file.
